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Words, devoid of space and context and the slightest of vocalizations, become strangleholds, trenches we dig to lie down in, waiting for the whistle of a mortar to streak past us.

He’s mad at me. For being less than pleased with him.

He LEFT ME. He walked out of this house, and left me, and I’m to be happy? I’m now a single mother to two daughters, faced with the sad reminders of all the last few years haven’t given me. But I should be molly sunshine. I should be in a good mood.

I try, but it’s the most I can do some days to grit my teeth and now scream and bawl my pain away, the last few years of being disparaged or ignored, treated like some paranoid crazy person, when I wasn’t.

I wasn’t crazy. I saw what was real, and was told that it wasn’t. And now I know.

It hurts to know that I loved him, that somewhere inside, the place where it burns to think of him with someone else, I still love him, somehow, the he who was, that person who fled years ago, replaced by a creature I neither know or understand. Sometimes I cry and wish for him back, the person I know is in there, the person I either scared away or lost to life. But he won’t be back.

Someone asked, if I missed him, or is I missed the idea of him, the partner, the husband. And it’s that which I miss, the knowledge that someone would be home when I got there, that I could say “my husband” and still feel that little thrill that he was my husband, all these years later. I missed him for so long that the mourning was long over for him.

I miss having someone to love though.

But we fight. And we growl, and he makes it clear that whatever he wants? It’s not me, and hasn’t been for a long time. All I ever wanted was love, and attention. A family. A bond between us that could weather any storm. A bond I must have fictionalized, somehow. I was never as real to him as people behind a computer would be. And that burns more fiercely than any person of flesh could.

I mourn my marriage. I mourn the boy I loved, I mourn the girl who loved him. I mourn the family I wanted, the one I want now, to keep safe and strong. I mourn the heart that can never quite be filled.

In spite of everything, I still love him, in that cold place where it aches to think of him with someone else. In spite of all the hurt, the nasty words hurled both ways, the calm we could never quite collect, love burns, and maybe always will. Even if it shouldn’t. It will always feel like he filled an emptiness in me that was never soothed.

But in a world full of children and jobs and mortgages and temptation, is that ever enough? Could it be enough?

I have been in your position, to a point. I have been cheated on, lied to, made to believe I was crazy. But not by my husband or the father of my children. I can not imagine the pain. I am so sorry you have to experience this gut-wrenching pain, Thor.

He wants to continue having his cake and eating it, too. He wants to leave, throw you into chaos AND expect you to sign off on it because I mean, honestly. Isn’t HIS happiness what is important here, what are you doing muddying the water with your messy feelings and emotions. The nerve.

He is a man-child. Not your fault but also not your problem. He is entitled to do what he did but he is not entitled to your blessing or coddling.